Friday, August 12, 2011

Italy Trip Part 6

Last part everybody. Yes in this installment I being my Italy trip to a close. Let's get started.

This was about a block away from the hotel. When we got lost we would ask people how to get here, then go to the hotel once we arrived. It seemed safer than telling strangers what hotel we were staying at.
We went for a lovely walk. We stopped to take pictures of many things including the Ponte Vecchio. Then the lovely walk turned into a death march up a huge hill/small mountain because there was (surprise) a church at the top. Also some great views of Florence.

 Like this.
 And this. (I think I can. I think I can.)
 After more trekking we got to this beautiful shot.
 This is me playing around with zoom. Seriously we were up high.
We made it! Anyway the next 10 or so pictures are just of my friends and I being silly. (Taking pictures of each other at the same time, extreme close-ups, shenanigans and what not). We shall continue this little photodiary...

On the way back down.

Back on... we weren't at sea so I can't say solid ground. Back on sea level ground? Whatever, we were done with the hill/mountain.

Anyway, that little hike was actually a last day in Florence activity. The next day we drove to Milan where the airport is. We didn't go straight there though. (Or maybe we did. I don't know the exact route. The point is we made a stop.)

It's Parma. I'm not sure if there are any universally recognized features to Parma equivalent to that tower in Pisa, so I put a picture of the clock tower.

We just hung out in Parma for a few hours. Looked around, got some cheese and olive oil.

The meet up park had some nice police/military people. I'm pretty sure they arrested a creepy looking dude near us. Also, some people found some pigeons and followed them around for a while.

The restaurant where we has lunch provided some opera singers for us. They were really good.

So, I've mentioned being a little immature before, but bear with me, I found this hilarious.

 There was a sign in the bathroom giving directions for using the toilet. I think my favorite is the third one where the guy just dances away.
In case you don't want to have to read the directions.

Anyway, we then left Parma and went to hang out in Milan for about an hour and a half. What do you think we did while there?

Did you guess that we visited a church? Yay! 10 points! (And an extra 5 points if you knew we visited, wait for it, on Good Friday.) BTW the points don't matter. You can't exchange them for anything.


We also saw this cool statue of Da Vinci.

So that wraps up the trip pretty much. We stayed in the airport hotel that night, then flew home the next morning.

My overall summery of the places that we went is as follows.
Rome grabs you by the lapels and screams "appreciate me! I'm old!"
Siena invites you to sit down and have some gelato while it tells you facinating stories.
Florence basically lays it out, "If you promise to look around and notice all the cool old stuff here I promise to keep you safe from cars.
Lucca is adorable and wants a hug.
Pisa says, "Hey you've seen the one really famous thing, now why don't you stay and look around a little more? Please?"
Parma invites you to dinner with its cheese and olive oil and prosciutto.
And Milan basically says, "I'm an important city. If you want to look around fine, but don't blame me if you get hit with a car. I have important fashion things to do. Don't bother me."

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